Every business with an incredible product starts with a problem. The catch is you have to understand the problem first and let your creativity follow. Andrew Capland, the former head of growth at Wistia as well as PostScript, relies on his creativity and strategic-planning chops to grow his companies faster. He’s now the massive brain behind Delivering Value— working with B2B leaders to celebrate their careers, and early-stage SaaS founders to scale their businesses.

The #GoodUX from this episode

Wistia’s team found that some new users were running into a problem during onboarding: they didn’t have a spare video just laying around to edit or practice using the software on.

That’s why Wistia created a loaner video that anyone could use to get their feet wet with the product. (It doesn’t hurt that it included the cutest pooch ever in a bowtie.)

It’s personal, friendly, and fun. Using a video to teach users how to do seemingly straightforward things may seem boring, but it can be extremely effective. The changes were exactly what users needed, and Wistia’s activation metric skyrocketed by 20%.

Read the full #GoodUX post about Wistia's helpful welcome video.

Quotes from this episode

“You don’t know what you don’t know until you really get close to understanding the problem and the customer. Then, all of a sudden, ideas for growth experiments just appear.”

“A lot of SaaS companies have this blank screen problem. It’s like looking at a Google Doc and there’s a blinking cursor with no words, and you’re like, “Well, I don’t know what to write”, and it feels overwhelming. If you don’t solve this, everything will be so much harder.”

“At its core, user onboarding is about delivering value to people inside of your product for the first time.”

“Your customers are just looking at your tool as a way to accomplish a goal.”

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Show notes

[5:49] How do they measure onboarding success?

[8:22] Andrew gives his framework on how to narrow down value points.

[10:51] How does he disseminate the framework that he has back to his team and how do they work cross-functionally?

[18:03] Andrew shares his experiences working on onboarding as the Head of Growth at Wistia.

[23:59] What are the learning lessons that Andrew encountered while he was doing data collection?

[26:30] The idea of making brand video templates for the company so that users could shortcut the experience while still gaining value from the product.

[31:40] Andrew shares his future projects and ideas that he’s currently working on for his company.

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About Andrew Capland

Andrew's core competencies include analyzing funnel data, running a/b tests, solving user acquisition challenges, new user onboarding, and managing high-volume product-led growth businesses. But his real passion lies in helping people around him scale up their careers by teaching them his systems and frameworks.

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🔗 Links:

Andrew Capland's website Delivering Value

Wistia's website

Postcript's website

👉 Profiles:

Lyla on LinkedIn‍

Ramli on LinkedIn

Andrew Capland on LinkedIn